


Iowa

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:39:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his admiralty days on Earth, with Spock on<br/>Vulcan, Kirk begins to have disturbing dreams.  Other<br/>strangeness follows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iowa

**Author's Note:**

> This story originally appeared (in a slightly different  
> form) in 1998 in the zine KaleideScope 8. If you can get  
> your hands on a copy, you really should, because it was  
> wonderfully illustrated (not by me. By a person with  
> artistic talent.)
> 
> For those who might be wondering: This story is free-  
> standing, but it does exist in the same universe as my  
> other K/S stories, especially "On the Edge of the  
> Mountain."
> 
> Words in Vulcan and Vulcan cultural concepts are borrowed  
> with the utmost respect from Diane Duane's magnificent  
> novel "Spock's World".

That summer, James Kirk found he couldn't sleep.  Too many  
times rising on the fringes of the night to pace the rooms  
of his San Francisco apartment.  The mornings found him  
seated before the windows, staring at the vanishing stars  
and gripping the arms of his chair so that his hands  
wouldn't shake.  He had ceased to notice the tremours that  
marked the rest of his body.  He dressed each morning from  
a closet full of grey and white tunics, scarred by his  
admiral's insignia and colourlessly painted with his  
restlessness.

Exhaustion made him edgy.  Once too often he snarled at a  
junior officer for some middling offence that he shouldn't  
have taken notice of.  He was living on caffeine and  
wandering the city like a zombie, radiating a hostility  
that drove people away.  No one at Command would talk to  
him.  

It was barely July when his dreams began to fragment.    
When he found odd moments of sleep, disconnected pieces of  
them merged, disturbing his subconsciousness and breaking  
his rest.  Other shards found him in the day, and reality  
would shatter.  For half a second, in the halls of  
Starfleet Command, he was among the rocks on an alien  
planet.  Buried in the shadows at their base.  He had been  
searching in those crevices for some small creature to  
eat, but others had come and he found the roles reversed  
so that he was the hunted.  Ready to kill them to defend  
himself.  Unwilling to emerge from these rocks into the  
blazing heat of the day.  So hot just beyond this patch of  
darkness . . .

"Admiral Kirk?"

Diffident hands on his arm.  Was he all right?  The padds  
he had been carrying were scattered across the corridor,  
creating a terrazzo pattern in combination with the last  
rays of sunlight cutting through the windows.

"I'm fine."  *leave me alone I want to be alone*  "Take  
these back to my office.  I'll deal with them tomorrow."

Kirk bolted down the corridor, vanished around a curve and  
locked himself in the washroom.  Sat alone in the dark,  
running hot hands over his face, then soaking them under  
the cold water tap and repeating the process until he  
shuddered at the iciness of his own touch.  Losing it.    
Shaking.  So tired.  He shook himself and left, surprised  
that beyond the plasteel windows it was already dark.

He went to Los Angeles.

The technology made it too easy.  The moments-long journey  
by transporter did nothing for his peace of mind.  He  
changed out of his uniform in the sterile silver washroom,  
not thinking until he was dressed again, anonymously, no  
longer the Starfleet Admiral.  Outside the civilian  
station, he rented a groundcar and drove into the city.    
Los Angeles was almost real.  Grubbier than San Fran, at  
least, more like people lived there.  More primitive.  He  
didn't even realize he was in Hollywood until he was  
pulled up to the curb and a face appeared at his mirrored  
passenger window.  Four hundred years of the city and you  
could still find boys on Sunset Boulevard.

So he ended up with a hustler in the car with him before  
his horror had time to even surface.  And they were  
halfway out of Hollywood before his hands began to shake  
again and he wanted to throw up.  The hustler was a dark-  
haired boy with a rough-hewn, Slavic face that was too  
familiar for Kirk's own comfort.  He couldn't do this.  It  
was awful.  Bought the kid supper at a Thai restaurant on  
a back street and threw more credits at him than the boy  
could possibly have expected for the trick.  Brown, too-  
human eyes stared at him under street lamps.

"Why?"

*because you are not him not mine not my mate  
leavemealone*

He gave him the Kirk grin.  Still almost boyish, not as  
old as he felt.  "Why not?  Go on."  Until the boy was  
gone and then he got back in the car and started to drive.

He called Admiral Nogura from a public communications  
centre in the suburbs.

"I need some time off."

Nogura shouldn't have been in his office, but he was.    
Working late again.  Kirk felt a pang of guilt for the  
work he'd left behind.  Nogura had iron-grey hair and  
black eyes that drooped a little with tiredness.  It was  
after midnight, almost oh-two hundred.

"Restless, Jim?"

"Something like that."

Tight smile.  "Go on.  Get out of here.  Come back when  
you're sane."  It was not entirely a joke.

He got back in the car and drove until the sun came up.    
North and east.  By dawn, he was somewhere in Utah,  
watching light break over the desert and mountains.    
Closer to home.

Every little town with a bar had a hotel to house it.    
Still, he must have got some strange looks when he checked  
into that one.  No one slept in those places, really; they  
were just excuses for the bars.  Perfect.  Smelling of  
dust, the curtains permanently drawn.  The semi-darkness  
took him down, weighing him with exhaustion until he fell  
asleep full clothed, fetal on the ancient box-spring bed.

*****

For ten seconds he is in darkness, a cut-stone meditation  
chamber without windows.  Firepot beast in the corner.    
Heat from its coals merging with heat in the air and the  
unspeakable chill of the stone.  All but naked, stretched  
back against the wall to feel the cold coming out of the  
earth.  Striving for control that eludes him like gossamer  
cobwebs and tears when he clutches at it too tightly.

*****

The desert was all around them.  Five sunrises past, they  
had left the oasis with skins of water on their hips and  
all they owned loaded on their backs.  The ones at the  
oasis had regarded them with suspicion and driven them to  
sleep beyond the perimeter of the protected camp.  That  
was only to be expected; the stranger is the one who comes  
to take your water and your hunting grounds.  Before they  
left, his mate had traded with the oasis-dwellers for the  
water and food.  He himself had remained with their  
possessions, watching.

So calm, that one, his beloved.  Fierce bone structure  
that might have been carved out of the planet's centre,  
impenetrable calm shielding his warrior nature.  His  
mate's dark colouring stood in contrast to his own fair  
hair that lurked beneath the dust-layers that had accreted  
in it since they began this journey, already three seasons  
past.  His mate had returned with the things they needed  
and they had departed before the sun could rise too high  
in the sky.  Before highsun, they had needed to conceal  
themselves again.

Now, days afterwards at sunfall, they erected their canvas  
shelter at the edge of a stand of rocks and found the  
small, moist creatures that lived in the crevices.  The  
skins they wore formed a single bed for both.  The desert  
so cold in the night.  Sleeping close together.  Warm skin  
on the arms wrapped around his shoulders.  His lover gave  
the slight urging that brought him deep into the embrace.    
They fit so close together, their bodies accommodating one  
another's curves and the hard ridges of bone.  Just before  
sleep, his mate's mind touched his own, flashing images of  
a day's travel and the dreamings that passed through a  
conscious mind in that time.  

*sand  rock   almost golden colourofthesky  taste of water    
touch of your skin to mine almost golden colourofyoureyes  
your beauty I love you*

*world of dust and wind and sky   hard ground rim of the  
Forge  sound of yourvoicelikesand grating off my ears so  
close to my own I need you*

*this is where the world starts I know it   we must be  
nearly there*

Flashes of images, moments of telepathic lovemaking before  
sleep.

*****

He offers the half-understood image of himself in this  
room now dark with the nearly-ended day.  Small sounds of  
the world outside a hotel room.  Water pooling in the sink  
and dust in the corners where it accreted on his shoes and  
hs slowly crumbled off while he sleeps.  Then blankness as  
he sleeps again and through the night.

*****

He kept driving.  By mid-afternoon, Kirk already couldn't  
remember the name of the hotel or even the name of the  
town that he'd stayed in the previous night.  All around  
the road were mountains and desert-dry highlands where the  
grass crackled at a touch.  There was dust in the air,  
raised by the groundcar's wheels.  He pulled onto a gravel  
road, stopped, and got out.  He knew he was up high and  
that the air should be cold, but his skin was blazing.    
Rocks jutted up from the ground, providing shade.  He was  
drawn towards them.  He started climbing.

. . . hunters at the edge of the rocks looking for him.    
The red sun hot against his flesh that was bare except for  
the skins wrapped around his waist.  Knife in his hand.    
Calling across the bond for his mate to help him help him,  
help him now before they killed him, oh gods he was so  
hot.  Whirling vision of a red sky and mountains seen  
through the thin air.

Disconnected fragments of a ravaged country of volcanoes  
and deep meditation.  His heart beating fast against his  
side.

Blazing hands ran over his ribs and settled against his  
ass.  Touch of lips to his.  He let himself fall into that  
touch, let himself moan when the long fingers slipped  
between his legs and pressed into him and stroked him, so  
hot against the thin skin too tightly stretched over his  
cock . . .

A raven croaked somewhere back and over his shoulder and  
there were rocks under his hands.  Blue sky behind the  
thinnest layer of cloud and a yellow sun.

Damn it.

Oh, he was losing it.  Kirk let himself slide down the  
rocks and rest in their shade.  Some part of his brain  
told him he must be feverish, but its voice was quiet  
enough to be lost in the dream fragments and fractured  
arousal coursing through his head.  He let the heels of  
his hands press into his thighs until the pressure brought  
him back together and he was able to stand.  And then he  
got back in the car.

That night, he didn't bother to stop.  For safety's sake,  
he locked a travel plan into the onboard computer and gave  
up driving.  He didn't want to think.  He stared out the  
window, seeing half a landscape in the car's running  
lights and his own reflection in the clear plasteel.  A  
slightly heavier face than he had worn at thirty, and  
creased around the mouth and eyes.  At some point, his  
hair had gotten darker.  Though fair, he wasn't blond  
anymore.  He was shading into middle age.  

He'd spent too many nights like this, unable to sleep or  
think or concentrate enough to read.  Someone had said it  
was like this after you got divorced.  Stupid.  He wasn't  
divorced.  At the back of his mind, almost totally silent,  
the bond was still there.  There was no ceremony or legal  
process that could divorce that.  But he was alone.

At dawn, he was halfway across Nebraska.  He hadn't slept  
yet.  Pulled off and bought coffee at a restaurant in a  
tiny connector town.  The waitress in the restaurant asked  
if he wanted anything to eat and he was halfway into  
ordering bacon and eggs before something in him revolted  
at the idea of eating animal flesh.  He ordered toast.    
Strawberry jam.  Ate it and paid for it and left, leaving  
a five-credit coin on the table as a tip for the waitress  
who had given him the oddest look when he interrupted  
himself in the middle of ordering.

By mid-afternoon, he was home.

Or as close to it as he intended to get.  He took back  
control of the car and pulled into a place called  
Winterset, Iowa.  A hundred or so kilometres northeast of  
him, his mother still lived on the farm, and at this time  
of year his nephew Peter would be home from college.  He  
didn't want to see them.  Didn't want to see Peter, the  
living ghost of Sam who was dead.  He didn't want to see  
anyone.  He checked into a motel at the edge of town and  
buried himself in the dark of his room.  

He'd been awake thirty hours, so of course he couldn't  
sleep.  As soon as he stretched out, his brain kicked into  
overdrive, images flashing through him fast as television.    
Finally gave up in disgust and left the motel room,  
wandered through the streets until he found a pharmacy and  
a bottle of over-the-counter sleep-aids.  The girl at the  
counter smiled at him like he looked like he needed them.

Back in his room, he stripped and showered. The first  
three pills kicked in.

*****

Hard, dry lips kiss him, bruise him, press into him so hot  
they must leave marks behind them like brands on his bare  
skin.

*****

The mountain had loomed above them for days before they  
reached it.  Its sides were faceted, already carved like  
jewels.  There was water there, dampening the stone, cold  
to the touch.  They drank.  And that night they slept  
beside the mountain.

Waking in the night.  The ground had shifted, subtly, in  
their sleep.  His mate crept from the tent, blade in hand,  
only to return for him and lead him outside with an  
expression that was only wonder.  Outside was the a'kweth,  
an ancient dweller from under the sand spoken of in myth  
with the same reverence reserved for the mountain.  It  
touched their minds.  Flashes of ancient wanderers  
stumbling on the Underliers, the beginning of speech, the  
understanding like ecstasy touching that face millennia  
dead.  They saw the first traveller, heard the first word.  
*Heya*, mountain.  The a'kweth before them swayed like a  
stone oracle.

*know that the universe is concerned with origins as well  
as outcomes  
  all you do affects the other  
harm speeds the heat-death of the universe*

Then its voice, whispers like stone on stone, or sand  
blowing.  ". . . heat . . . death . . ."

It was so hot.  Flaming even at night, body heat  
indistinguishable from the heat of air and stone.

*****

Outside, Gol and Vulcan's Forge beyond it are incomparably  
beautiful, but his body is burning and he can't be  
bothered to look.  The stone room echoes his breathing  
back to him as a mass of noise.  The air stinks faintly of  
the sulphur from far-off volcanoes.

*****

The thing was, he didn't really understand whether Spock  
had left him.  The five-year mission had ended, Kirk had  
been declared Chief of Fleet Operations and re-posted to  
earth.  At the time, almost eighteen months before, he  
hadn't even really understood what was wrong with that  
move.  He'd only felt a vague uneasiness.  Instincts for  
his ship had kept him aboard long after everyone else had  
disembarked and there was only a skeleton crew in  
Engineering to keep the Enterprise company in spacedock.

He'd stayed on, putting off requests for meetings and  
walking the empty halls.  Touching panels, feeling cold  
metal and the contradictory textures of a starship.    
Finally he came to the bridge.

The area lights had been out, the room illuminated by  
half-activated displays that let him see shape but not  
colour.  He'd walked the perimeter of that space, then  
sunk into his chair, *in medias res*, at the centre of  
things, and called for screen on.  Gentle automation had  
given him an interior view of spacedock.  Grey metal and  
flood lights and vacuum.  Ships hanging in the night.  And  
he'd stayed there a long time, trying to evaluate the cold  
emptiness that had settled beneath his breastbone and  
spread through his limbs.

He hadn't known that Spock had come back to the ship, but  
he felt the other's mind in the instant before Spock  
stepped onto the darkened bridge.  It was a telepathic  
caress, barely words, unfinished.

*what is this cold in you*

"I don't know," he'd whispered.  Spock had come up behind  
him so simply and stood there, hands folded, gazing at the  
viewscreen.  Kirk had been able to feel the heat radiating  
from his lover's alien-warm body.  "What have I done,  
Spock?"  Silence.  "I've ruined it.  I've lost the  
Enterprise.  I'll never get her back."

Silence.  A flash of warmth had warned him the moment  
before Spock's palms came to rest on his shoulders, and  
something like comfort had come to him through those  
hands.  He'd relaxed into the touch, slumped bonelessly  
back in the captain's chair.  A moment of Vulcan lips  
against his hair, then Spock had withdrawn.

The low, grating voice ran through his bones when Spock  
answered him.  "You have made a decision, Jim.  You will  
change your life and adapt as you always do."  And the  
silent response, *know you  know you are afraid   you will  
adapt survive live   you are James Kirk are my beloved    
you will do what you have to do*

Kirk had turned then, met those reserved, Vulcan eyes that  
were shielding something from him, if only he could fathom  
what it was.  But it had been so much easier at that  
moment to step down from the chair and wrap his arms  
around that hard, angular body and feel the warmth of an  
alien life against him.  To tilt his head and claim those  
dry lips that hesitated a moment before they pressed back  
against his own.

*thank you    love you*

Hot body against his own, tracing Spock's narrow mouth  
using only the very tip of his tongue.  Feeling through  
the bond the sensation of cooling as his mouth left  
dampened portions of Spock's face behind.  Then Spock had  
kissed him back.  Vulcan lips had massaged his, bruised  
and comforted small portions of skin.  He could have  
fallen into that mouth and disappeared.  Wrapped around  
one another, easing into a single pattern of thought.

After the first deep kiss, there had only been small ones.    
Spock's Vulcan body was so naturally dry; his kisses  
suggested the desert, dropping on Kirk's face and neck and  
burning him.  Holding and rocking one another in the  
almost-dark.

He didn't know after when it stopped being comfort and  
started being need.  He had been so *angry*, though not at  
Spock.  Someone's else's damned fault.  His hands had  
fumbled up and under the other's shirt.  He'd struggled  
the garment to chest height before warm, dry hands had  
gently removed him and efficiently disrobed.  Efficiently  
and unabashedly erotically.  Spock's pale skin, made paler  
by years in space, had appeared too slowly; clothes had  
danced around the lean body and vanished into the shadows  
behind the command chair.  Flash of desire, flash of rage,  
and Spock had been at him and undressing him too.  Words  
had come through by touch, his thoughts or Spock's he was  
never able afterwards to determine.

*you have been my lover time out of mind  
 I know your body like my own  
     your touch like all of me in you  
scars - here and here - trace your body like my hands  
I have known you  
     I have touched you  
  I would touch you again*

He would have liked for them to lie down together and make  
love gently over many hours in the semi-darkness of the  
bridge, but that wasn't in any way possible.  Even if they  
had had the hours, he would have broken the moment those  
arms came around him.  He had surfaced again from the  
contact to find himself naked and the air cool.  Spock had  
stood with his face in Kirk's hair, unmoving, possibly  
still absorbed in the bond.  It wouldn't have been the  
first time he had lingered there after Kirk had removed  
himself.  Spock saw things Kirk didn't want to see in  
himself, that he didn't want to know.  He hadn't wanted to  
analyse *why* he was angry, he'd just wanted to be angry.

He had wrenched himself back from Spock and then pulled  
the Vulcan in to kiss him hard.  There had never been a  
question of consensuality when he took the initiative.    
Kirk faced an alien strength that could have driven him  
into the wall and into submission, that could easily push  
him back if his lover refused.  But Spock had only yielded  
to the kiss and then knelt, searching in the darkness and  
reemerging with slick hands to coat Kirk's aching  
erection.  The touch of a tongue to his scrotum, a kiss on  
his thigh, and the other rose, turned, and bent over the  
command chair.

Even raging, Kirk had moved as he always did.  Strange to  
find it wasn't at all routine, only instinct-guided, led  
by the will not to hurt.  He had grasped Spock's hands and  
taken the lubricant onto his own fingers, then slid a  
single digit between his lover's buttock's and deep  
inside.  While he twisted it and listened to Spock gasp  
and occasionally hiss his name, he'd kissed patterns onto  
the hot, pale skin in front of him.

*I love you like my life  
touch you so deeply and you let me  
     I could stay here with you  
like this a thousand years and never tire of you  
always touch you with the same wonder  
the same passion  
love you   am you  have been each other  still within you  
believe I love you that I am yours forever  
I could not so easily forget*

He'd had three fingers buried deep inside when Spock had  
finally demanded.  It wasn't a moan or a hiss but a growl  
that his beloved offered him.  "Jim.  Now."  Two syllables  
stretched into many.  What choice could he possibly have  
had, even if he hadn't wanted this so much?  His cock had  
been so hard; he could feel his own heartbeat as the veins  
pressed tightly against the skin.

Consciously, he never understood how they were able to  
kiss in that position, but Spock's lips had been so close  
and then had been open around his.  When they broke the  
contact, he'd kissed his way across Spock's shoulder  
blades and spine.  He'd felt the cool touch across the  
bond as if it were his own skin he were touching.  He'd  
been able to feel the head of his cock pressed against  
Spock's opening, threatening to enter and then refusing.    
"Jim, please."  His cheek had rested against Spock's back,  
feeling both cool and hot, his hands on the other's hips,  
and he had thrust in.

Long moment of acclimatization to penetration in the  
excruciatingly tight passage, and then they were working  
together for this, thrusting and bucking to deepen the  
contact.  He'd thought afterwards that it should have  
seemed rough and desperate, but it hadn't at the time.    
There had been, as there always was in their lovemaking,  
an understanding of the feelings between them, an  
acknowledgement of the desperation, a shared need.  He had  
needed this, and, on some level, so had Spock.  Enough for  
Spock to relay his deepening pleasure into Kirk's mind,  
even enough for Spock to vocalize it.

"Oh by any gods, t'hy'la, *please*, yes, oh yes . . ."

Kirk hadn't himself been in enough control to form words,  
but his ragged breathing had formed the single rhythm of  
"I love you."  And he had still been there, pressing  
against Spock's back, one hand gripping the prominent  
hipbone.  The other hand he had drawn around his lover's  
body to grip the hard, blazing-hot cock and pump it in  
rhythm with his breaths.  Screaming *love you* through  
that touch.  He hadn't been in control by then.  He'd come  
with a sob without breaking his rhythm, screaming against  
the friction even as it pushed him farther, waiting for  
Spock to join him.  And when he finally did, Kirk felt the  
orgasm in all the muscles pressed against his body and in  
his mind as a howl and a sudden tight gripping of the bond  
that maintained that Spock would never let him go.

It was only then that they had collapsed to the floor and  
Kirk found that he'd been right.  The moment they twisted  
into an embrace, all the mental fortifications he'd been  
bracing collapsed.  And he'd cried, horrible, wracking  
sobs that echoed off the bridge walls and denied whatever  
dignity he still possessed.

*oh beloved what have I done what have I done  
whathaveIdone    I gave up my ship I could have fought for  
her but I didn't    I was so weak so stupid what will I do  
what have I done*

The words he would have expected from a human lover had  
been conspicuously absent.  There hadn't been any "there,  
there," or "don't cry," or even "it's all right."  Just  
Spock's calm *I know*.  The acknowledgement of Kirk's  
wretchedness and his need to cry.  And all the time  
Spock's hands had roamed over his shoulders and tangled in  
his hair and Spock's thoughts had touched his and kept him  
from true hysteria.

In fact, they had lain there virtually all night.  It had  
taken a long time for Kirk to cry himself out.    
Afterwards, there had been no energy left in either of  
them to move, and they'd only been able to bury themselves  
in their clothes to keep the room's chill from Spock's  
body, and sleep.

It had been something on the order of oh-four hundred  
hours when Kirk had woken.  He'd felt good, better.  Spock  
had left their embrace, dressed, and moved away to stand  
on the bridge's upper level.  He hadn't been in uniform.    
He'd been wearing those wonderful Vulcan travelling  
clothes, uniformly black and soft, impossible to wrinkle.    
Oh, he'd been beautiful.  Sharp, aristocratic features  
defined by the shadows in the still-darkened bridge, hard  
body, graceful, watchful stance, perfectly balanced.  It  
was so easy to lie there and watch him that Kirk hadn't  
noticed for long minutes that the bond was silent.

"I must apologize," Spock had said softly, finally.  "I  
did not mean when I came seeking you for us to come  
together like that.  It was inappropriate.  It was unfair  
to you."

He'd almost laughed.  He'd wanted it, all of it.  How  
could they still have these instants of misunderstanding  
after years together?  "Spock . . ."

"Let me finish, Jim."  The dark eyes hadn't quite met his,  
then or ever that morning.  "You have made a decision to  
accept the rank of admiral and the position of Chief of  
Starfleet Operations.  I too have made a decision."

Then it had been unreal, the words coming over too great a  
distance.  Kirk had already sat up and wrapped his arms  
around his knees; he'd needed that steadying posture.

". . . resigned my Starfleet commission as of fifteen  
hundred hours yesterday.  I am returning to Vulcan."

Unreal.

"How can I explain this to you so that you may understand?    
I have felt a lack within myself, for over a standard year  
now.  I seek to fill that emptiness.  I have declared my  
intention to travel to Gol to undergo the *Kolinahr*, the  
purgation of emotion, the final attainment of logic."    
Spock's face had been unreadable, even to Kirk.  Not even  
the slightest change of muscular arrangement that he had  
learned to recognize as easily as human expressions.    
"This has nothing to do with you.  It is something I must  
do for myself.

"I must go."

*I am so sorry Jim*

Not "t'hy'la," not "beloved."  Jim.  The public form of  
address.  And then the bond had been silent and Spock had  
turned and left, and Kirk had been left sitting there, in  
the darkness of his bridge, until he could pull himself  
together and dress.

*****

Iowa by day presented him with colours that he had not  
seen in years.  Space had been monochromatic, defined by  
the absence of light between stars.  San Francisco was  
brown and blue and silver, the gleaming city sandwiched  
between the chaparral hills and the ocean.  Iowa outside  
Winterset was a study in greens that hurt his eyes.    
Bright grass, dark trees, shading into one another  
maddeningly, like a scene painted in heavy acrylics.    
Unrelieved colour.  It overwhelmed him, penetrated his  
sinuses and made him want to scream.

The distraction was welcome.  He'd slept through much of  
the afternoon and the night in a drugged stupor, not  
dreaming at all.  When sunlight penetrated the room's  
heavy curtains, he'd risen, showered, and walked across  
the highway to eat in one of the town's small restaurants.    
This time, he'd been cautious and ordered pancakes.  No  
part of him had objected, and he'd been able to eat them.    
On the way out, he'd arranged to buy a litre of coffee  
with cream and sugar in an insulated container.  He'd  
taken it with him in the car and gone driving.

He didn't have anything like a destination this time, he  
just wanted to move.  Gods, he was restless.  He found  
gravel roads and dirt roads that he knew would wreak havoc  
on the groundcar's delicate systems and followed them  
anyway.

Kirk stopped when he found water.  A couple of hundred  
yards off a road that probably didn't merit the name,  
there was a pond and trees.  So much colour, he thought it  
must be in the air, that it must penetrate his body.  Easy  
enough to pull off the road and hike across a pasture to  
the water.  Easier still in the heat and humidity of the  
day to strip and wade in, washing himself with small  
splashings of his hands.

The pond bottom was muddy; he burrowed his toes down into  
it.  Used the traction then to launch himself forward and  
swim.  The rhythm of it felt easy to him.  Arm over, face  
down.  Arm over, face up and breathe.  Kick.  Then turn  
and swim back to shore, climb out and sit naked on the  
grass.  Small insects shimmered through the air and landed  
briefly on his shoulders and thighs.  Microscopic feet  
touched and caressed him and departed again.

Iowa, yes.  He was looking for something here that he  
hadn't yet defined.  It wasn't this, but this felt good,  
and it might be part of it.  Trees, grass, water, insects.    
Water.  Gods, it was all around him, it was in the air.    
It heightened the colours.  When he sweated, nothing  
evaporated off him.  When he'd walked across the pasture  
to this place, passing through the air had felt like  
parting curtains of water.  Kirk knew he should like it;  
he'd spent too many years on a starship where the air was  
dry enough to rip the moisture out of his skin.  He wished  
he knew whether he liked this new humidity or not.

Wind cut suddenly through the steamy air and ruffled the  
trees.  A shower of dry leaves and delicate seed pods came  
down over him, settling into the slight curls of his hair  
and lodging there.  Kirk laughed and shook himself, then  
went to the pond to wash the rest of them off.  He plunged  
his head into the water,

                 . . . pulled his head out of the shallow  
pool and shook his long, loose hair out over his shoulders  
like a pleasured animal.  They were lucky to find such a  
place unfouled and still giving water.  Or perhaps it was  
giving water again after a long spell as a dry oasis deep  
in the desert.  The day was at its hottest, flashing  
against his skin with heavy red light.

It was their first stop since leaving the a'kweth at the  
foot of the *heya*, the single mountain embracing the  
wasteland.  His beloved had staggered on their journey,  
was so terribly hot all the time.  His beloved hung back  
near the rocks and watched him at the water.

They had been silent a long time, communicating only in  
thoughts and gestures.  He gathered water in his two hands  
and offered it to the beloved's lips.  The two dry lines  
parted and allowed the liquid in before it spilled.    
Almost instantly, his lover's colour began to restore  
itself, and he was so grateful he could have wept, even in  
the water-stealing heat of the sun.

He was startled when his lover's tongue lashed out to  
catch his damp fingers and draw them inside the mouth.    
This wasn't even a kiss, only a fierce devouring, a  
sharing of the body's heat.  An expression of desire.

They travelled no farther that day.

In the night, they lay in their tent between the rocks and  
he cradled his beloved's head against his chest.  The  
desert had stolen away its heat at nightfall; they should  
have been terribly cold.  Just the same, his beloved's  
skin remained blisteringly hot.  Their bond had been  
silent this day, but he could feel a frantic undercurrent  
to it, and he recognized that it ignited echoes within his  
own body.  Understanding surfaced gradually, a leisurely  
movement between water and rock.

"It is your burning time."  His own voice, but in a  
whisper.  His lover nodded, a motion more felt than seen.    
Even in the cold, sweat ran over him like . . .

               tiny floods of pond water that streamed  
over his naked shoulders and body and pooled on the  
ground.  The day was hot, the air was humid, the colours  
spoke of Iowa.

Oh he was most certainly losing his mind.  Having waking  
visions now.  Desire was in his body all the time.

For a long time afterwards Kirk sat staring at the water.    
Somewhere in his mind he knew that his fair skin must be  
reddening in the too-dense sunlight.  When the sun was low  
enough to carve elongated shadows on the bank, he got  
dressed and walked back to the car.

*****

In the early evening, Kirk lay on the bed in his motel  
room and watched television.  The BBC news, having  
retained its form and name through three and a half  
centuries of broadcasting and the dissolution of Great  
Britain as a political entity, recited political episodes  
from a half-dozen worlds.  Off to one side, the season's  
popular drama played out soundlessly.  Two other marginal  
shots seemed to run only commercials.  The images ran  
together enough that he didn't have to think about them.    
Eventually, he turned the volume down to nothing and let  
the small sounds of the road outside fill his room.

For the first time in weeks, suddenly, he was sleepy.  He  
waved the television off, threw the paper carton he'd  
eaten supper out of in the recycler, and stripped.  Too  
hot.  He pushed the blankets onto the floor and buried  
himself in just the sheets.

*****

The transition nearly instantaneous, there is only a half-  
second of two rooms on different planets blurred together.

*****

They faced each other across the narrow tent and did not  
touch for several minutes.  When he reached out to touch  
his mate, it was as though he were bridging an enormous  
distance.  The other's hand rose up reflexively and only  
the tips of their fingers touched.  Hot skin in the cold  
air.  Their minds brushed across the narrow point of  
contact.  He began the ritually slow, two-fingered caress,  
up his mate's hand, down his arm, feeling the narrow  
tendons shift under the skin.  Then he was stilled by  
strong hands and the touch was inverted, tracing him over  
and defining him.  He could feel awareness growing from  
his fingertips, expanding to each place his lover touched  
until he gained arms, shoulders, a body, legs.

It was only after that that they kissed.  His beloved's  
mouth covered his almost desperately, afraid he might be a  
ghost summoned by the desert to taunt a burning man and  
then vanish.  Fiery at the back of his skull, the bond  
crackled.  He clung to it while his body expanded and  
ignited and wanted the other. *love you love you will not  
leave you   I am here I promise I will never leave you*    
He threw the thought out and heard it echoed in his  
beloved's mind.

They were kissing all the time now.  His hands fumbled  
against that hard, olive-toned body, stripping the  
clothing away and spreading the skins out into their bed  
with movements made awkward by his arousal.  The hides  
brushed his cock on their way down and made him hiss into  
his mate's kisses.  He couldn't believe they had been  
wearing clothes at all.  How could they have needed them?    
He was so hot he was burning and still his mate's skin  
scalded him.  Their bodies must be shedding layers of heat  
strong enough to distort night images into fever dreams.

He found himself undressed and held against the skins by  
the full mass of his lover's body.  His lover's urgency in  
kissing him and stripping them both seemed to have been  
sated for a moment, because he seemed content to layer  
small, sucking kisses across the fair skin offered up to  
him.  Then withdrew and smiled.  An odd expression that,  
he knew vaguely, and one he had not often seen before.    
Green-tinged lips brushed his, then travelled around the  
side of his head.  His lover's tongue grazed his ear in  
the instant before those lips wrapped fully about its  
rounded edges and the mouth sucked hard.  He exhaled from  
the back of his throat, giving near-voice to the  
electrified nerve impulses coursing through his body and  
centring in his cock. *oh yes oh t'hy'la oh never stop*

There was the sudden need to touch his mate more  
intimately; he couldn't tolerate his own passivity.  He  
arched his back and rolled up, straddling the other's  
thighs and rubbing their erections together, then driving  
his weight forward to bear them both down, this time with  
him on top.  For a moment, he tensed his inner thighs and  
felt as much as heard his lover howl at the stimulation.    
Then he withdrew a little and studied the one under him.

His mate was, by any standards he could remember, powerful  
and exotic.  He was not yet old, but the desert had cut  
deep creases into that long face, creating down-drawn  
lines that contrasted to the flaring cheekbones.  The  
normally pale skin was flushed bronze with arousal, green  
under the surface with only the barest hint of an alien  
scarlet.  Long-fingered hands still clutched at his  
wrists, a gesture he mirrored to give them an unbroken  
connection.

He lowered himself slowly to that hard body and tasted it  
at the juncture of neck and shoulder.  With his tongue, he  
isolated the nerve on which the slightest pressure would  
render his lover unconscious.  He moved slowly down the  
body, kissing open but dry-mouthed against the skin.    
Surely whatever moisture he had not lost to the desert had  
burned away already.  His barely damp tongue pictured ribs  
and skin and the hard bone of an unpadded hip.  Kissed his  
way along that ridge. *I know your body like my own*   The  
body under him writhed, sought the contact.  It burned.

His hands were immobilized, trapped at hip-level by his  
lover's and held numbingly tight.  He worked without them.    
Dark hair traced the hard, narrow body under him from  
chest to groin.  He kissed his way along that path and  
dragged his nose through the dark fur, seeking both scent  
and sensation, stopping only when his lover's blistering  
erection caught at his jaw.  It was so easy to rub his  
cheek against that too-thin skin and press his face into  
the pubis until he felt the pulse and bone.  Trying in his  
own mind to define that smell, of days of sand, of hard,  
sharp air, of the cinnamon and ginger that made his eyes  
water.  Drawing on the deepest corners of his mouth to wet  
his own lips.

Only then lowering his mouth onto that cock, feeling his  
lover's fingernails bite into his wrists, driving himself  
to swallow before he choked.  The first words in longer  
than he could remember clamoured in his ears.  "Oh, Jim,  
*yes*!!!"  His jaw already ached from holding his teeth  
away from the hypersensitive member around which his  
tongue was wrapped.

Fervent hands guided his own to the hinge of his jaw and  
massaged the juncture until he relaxed.  Less painfully  
now, he sucked at the cock in his mouth, pulling at the  
skin and feeling the blood rushing through the twinned  
veins along the sides.  He could breathe, still, and feel  
a moisture in his mouth that the desert could not touch,  
he could grip his lover and hold him.  Once, he withdrew  
until only the double-ridged head still remained in his  
mouth and, raising his eyes to meet his beloved's, he  
flicked his tongue over and into the tip of that cock  
until the other's parched gasps became howls again. *oh  
please t'hy'la no more   you touch me so deeply feels so  
good how could I not love you  please beloved oh please*    
Then back down, not into his throat, but as much as he  
could take in his mouth.  

He gained the release of one hand; the other was so  
tightly twined in his lover's that he could not remember  
which fingers were his own.  With the fingers that he knew  
were his, he brushed the tightened scrotum and ran down  
the perineum until he found the entrance to his lover's  
body.  Reluctant to enter with dry, air-seared fingertips,  
he pressed the broader pad of his finger against the  
opening, at the same time wailed *I love you* into the  
bond.

His lover screamed, a ragged-throated sound as if he were  
very far away, and came.  His mouth was suddenly full and  
he was tasting the ejaculate like smoke and swallowing  
frantically before he lost it to the desert air.  He was  
so intent on his action that it was another moment before  
his lover's orgasm hit him fully and he felt the shock run  
through him, fragmenting the dream.

*****

There is a confusion of images in which neither knows  
where he is.

*****

Kirk woke with semen-taste in his mouth and the scream  
still in his mind.  Iowa, nighttime, brilliant moonlight  
beyond the loosely woven motel room curtains.  The bond  
pulsed frantically against his thoughts.  He was naked and  
the air was damp and it was so *cold*, this couldn't be  
his homeworld.  The sense of Spock, a dozen or more light  
years away on Vulcan was so immediate that they couldn't  
possibly not be in the same room.  Gods he wanted him, so  
badly his body ached.

Spock's hands covered his, lean arms wrapped around his  
body, warming him and driving away the water in the air.    
It was unthinkable that he should do something other than  
press back against that touch.  Spock was around him,  
deepening the embrace, guiding them both down to the bed,  
Kirk face down and exulting in the sensation of the other  
against his skin.  He was blind now; he didn't care.    
Forget.  Let him carry you through this.

Even in the added warmth, he could feel the heat of  
Spock's body.  Those hands spread his thighs wide enough  
to edge into pain as he pushed against the limits of his  
body.  Those long fingers defined each muscle in Kirk's  
shoulders and back, calligraphing names and symbols deep  
into his flesh.  Palms stroked him, willing his  
frightened, tired muscles to relax and accept the contact.

In the instant after that, he felt deep moisture and hard  
flesh against the entrance to his body.  Kirk's anus  
throbbed as if he had been stretched impossibly wide and  
then abandoned.  The penetration came simultaneously with  
a whisper, so absolutely Spock's voice, "I love you like  
my life."  Oh gods, that cock was inside him and pushing  
deeper, entirely lubricated and still feeling like the  
desert, pushing so hard against the tight confines of his  
body that he knew he should be screaming, but he couldn't  
generate any sound beyond his own breath.  There was an  
interval of contact while they rested with Spock's hot  
body stretched over Kirk's.  Spock's arms were locked  
around his shoulders; he couldn't believe how close they  
were together.  Inside, he was burning.

The moment exploded into motion.  Kirk felt the other body  
raise up from his back and the cock begin to pump in and  
out of his ass.  The friction was incredible; it hurt like  
hell and he wouldn't have traded it for anything.  The  
violence of the thrusts jolted him out of rational thought  
and all at once he was pushing back, daring the other to  
pound him into the ground, to take him apart and let him  
disappear.  Screaming, "Oh yes, oh yes, yes please oh gods  
Spock . . ."  And then only screaming, not caring if  
anyone could hear him.  Kirk's own cock was trapped under  
his body, pressed into the bed, and he was coming before  
he realized that neither of them had put a hand to it.  

He wrenched his face out of the pillow and shrieked  
Spock's name, the whole, ancient one of unnumbered  
syllables, naming a thing that was part of his bones.    
Calling the other one closer to him and losing the hot  
spurts of his lover's orgasm in the complexity of his own  
voice.

His heartbeat eased only slowly, and he became dimly aware  
that the wind was blowing outside, moving the air into  
alien patterns and stirring the water out of it until the  
country became livable again.  The kiss on the back of his  
neck was only a ghost.  Kirk rolled onto his side and  
stared through the gaps in the curtains at the night  
outside, feeling its energy prickle across his skin.  Gods  
he was cold.  He freed himself from the tangle of sheets  
and retrieved the bedspread from where he had thrown it on  
the floor.  In bed, he wrapped it around himself, the  
insular habit of a man sleeping alone.

Spock?

*Spock?*

Silence.  His bedroom filled with the slight, aching  
sounds of an aging motel shifting in the gale.  Isolated  
muscles in his body still twitched with the stray impulses  
set moving by sex.  He couldn't possibly be alone in this  
place.

*Spock?*

*it's all right Jim you will understand   must know I love  
you   sleep now beloved I am closer than you know*

The hands on his body were only breaths, but he was  
exhausted, and it was so easy to slip deeper until he lost  
the continuity of the moment.

*****

The place in which Kirk finds himself is not dream,  
precisely.  He is asleep, only vaguely aware of it, as  
though buried deep within his own mind.  Through the  
warmth and the darkness come glimpses Vulcan and the  
sensations of Spock's body in the cut-stone chamber of a  
postulate to the Kolinahr.

*Jim*

*.*

*you must recognize I love you*

*. . .*

*please t'hy'la*

*you were never there*

*I was*

*no*

*this is the deep meditation undergone to control the ponn  
farr   I did not mean in the beginning to cling to you so  
tightly*

*why*

*because I love you*

*you were prepared to give me up*

*never   love you still and always*

*. . .*

*love you though it cripple me  
love you in the deepest part of my mind  
beneath the Kolinahr   you cannot be rejected or removed  
     I will not give you up  
you are my mate   beloved   t'hy'la  
you are part of my being*

*!*

*came here seeking myself  
     found you in me  
your deeper name as part of me*

*it cannot be the name you found  the one you called  
Enterprise   I gave her up*

*the ship will still be there   you are defined by it  
beloved   you were captain are admiral are James Kirk I  
love you*

*I love you Spock I miss you*

*I know   you are my mate my beautiful boy I will still be  
part of you when you wake*

There are other visions afterwards, of a motel room in  
Iowa and of water in the air and the sounds of rising and  
falling winds.  The words *you have been my lover time out  
of mind* drift vaguely across his thoughts, but they fade,  
buried under exhaustion and the fragments of other dreams.

*****

He woke to colder air.  In his sleep, he had clutched the  
blanket so tightly around him that it took him several  
moments to get free.  Naked, he padded to the high,  
horizontal window and eased one curtain back.

Grey clouds had blown in and sucked the moisture into  
higher levels of the atmosphere.  They reduced the size of  
the sky a little.  The wind was still strong enough to  
scream occasionally through the uninhabited streets at the  
edge of town, bending trees and throwing bits of paper  
into a chain-link fence.  Without the brilliant light, the  
colours had muted themselves to bearable tones.  He let  
the curtain fall.

To his surprise, the bed sheets were marked with blood.    
His body felt raw.  He stripped the bed himself and  
pitched the damaged coverings in the recycler before  
making his way into the shower.  In the bathroom mirror,  
he made out faint bruises, as of fingerprints, on his  
shoulders and hips, but they were already fading.  In this  
early morning, he felt disinclined to question which  
aspects of his life were reality.  After his shower, the  
mirror was fogged and he didn't have to examine the  
details of himself.

James Kirk sat in the motel chair with a towel wrapped  
around his waist and stared out his window.  He knew on  
some level that there were things he should be doing, but  
he wasn't prepared for them yet.  He was still hyper-aware  
of his own body, of the chair upholstery against his legs  
and of the small bones beneath the skin of his hand.  In  
the drawer he found a pen and paper, archaic writing  
instruments, and a padd with the same book on it that  
existed in every hotel room in which he had ever rested.

It had been years; his lettering was awkward at first,  
then easier as he fell back into the familiar patterns of  
writing.  The ink in the pen was comfortingly black.  He  
was going to send a letter, force a Federation built on  
ethereal data to deliver it for him to another planet.

  
                                   19 July 2267  
                                   Winterset, Iowa, Terra  
Spock,

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my  
beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my brother, my  
love, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my  
locks with the drops of the night.  (Song of Solomon 5:2)

I miss you.

                                        Jim

  
On the folded and sealed envelope, he wrote Spock's name  
in Vulcan characters.

The wind was still blowing outside, stirring the water and  
the air, and soon it was going to rain.  Before he could  
go home, he was going to have to put himself back  
together.


End file.
